Note 586 — Chapter XXIV

There is only one claimant, in a proper sense, for the Icon Basilice, which is Gauden himself; the king neither appears by himself or representative. And, though we may find several instances of plagiarism in literary history (one of the grossest being the publication by a Spanish friar, under another title, of a book already in print with the name of Hyperius of Marpurg, its real author), yet I cannot call to mind any, where a man known to the world has asserted in terms his own authorship of a book not written by himself, but universally ascribed to another, and which had never been in his possession. A story is told, and, I believe, truly, that a young man assumed the credit of Mackenzie’s Man of Feeling, while it was still anonymous. But this is widely different from the case of the Icon Basilice. We have had an interminable discussion as to the Letters of Junius. But no one has ever claimed this derelict property to himself, or told the world, I am Junius.